Oblivion
by Krissy Mae Anderson
Summary: One night of oblivion can have terrible consequences... Ch. 1 edited, 2 up - Luka has a bad day at work. A post-S7 AU fic.
1. The Morning After

_"Oblivion" by VjeraNadaLjubav_

**Summary: **One night of oblivion can have terrible consequences...  
**Rating: **PG-13 (might be changed to R later on)  
**Spoilers: **Hmm... "Benton Backwards", "Flight Of Fancy", all Maggie episodes and some Bishop Stewart episodes.  
**Disclaimer:** "ER" does not belong to me. It belongs to NBC, WB, Amblin, Constant C and a ton of other people...  
**Acknowledgements: **Huge thanks to Caran, who spent countless AIM chat sessions being badgered by me to help with development of the ever-changing plotline and beta read this story for me. And thanks to countless other ER friends, especially Naomi, who encouraged me to continue writing it despite the doubts I've had about it, and Jen, who helped with some of the dialogue.  
**Stuff that doesn't fit into other categories: **  
- It is somewhat of a parallel/alternate universe fic by now, since I started writing it in May 2001. It is in my own sick little universe, and there is no Season Eight, Nine, Ten, or Eleven and no one's gone and no one's dead! insert mad scientist laugh here  
- As mentioned above, this fic was started even before I went to college (three years ago, to be truthful), long before Luka and Abby broke up, and was probably the one fic all my ER AIM buddies could recite backwards and forwards. I've abandoned it for a while because I had no ideas for it, and I've decided to take it up again because I have no new fic ideas... It is not going to be a particularly happy story, or a one that makes much sense, so bear with me – the idea for the story just needed to come out and would not take "no" for an answer. From the things that happen later in the story, some might surmise that I hate Abby, which I don't – I liked her up the beginning of season Nine, but after that I became merely indifferent to her, and I will not trying to turn her evil here. I just wanted to explore an often-overlooked theme that I have noticed, and Luka and Abby had somehow fit into the story.  
- The story starts in early June of 2001.  
- Italics indicate a dream or a flashbacky thing.  
- Any suggestions about the fic are welcome, since I am still not sure how it will end after threesomething years of working on it.

Chapter One - "The Morning After"

_The laughter was getting louder and louder. _

_Abby opened her eyes and looked around, wondering who was laughing so noisily and disturbing her sleep. She frowned when she saw that Maggie was walking towards her hand in hand with Luka. Abby suddenly felt jealous of that laughter, jealous of the way Luka held Maggie's hand._

_They stopped in front of her, and she realized that Maggie was wearing a wedding dress and Luka wore the suit he usually wore to church. She looked down and saw an engagement ring on Maggie's left hand._

_"I'm sorry, Abby. Your mother is more mature. She is a very nice woman. It's nothing against you personally, but you are just not mature enough for me," Luka whispered and turned away, smiling at Maggie who suddenly seemed to become many years younger. Abby tried to say something, to ask them what the hell was going on, but nothing came out._

_"Abby, honey, meet your new stepfather," Maggie said, lifting her bride's veil up so Luka could kiss her._

_Abby opened her mouth to scream..._

... and woke up. The first thing she felt was the burning in her throat. She remembered crying the night before, watching a nine-year-old die. A nine-year-old girl raped and left to die in the pouring rain. She remembered going to a bar, with someone. She remembered drinking. But she wasn't supposed to drink. She was an alcoholic. She promised herself to never drink again when she joined the AA. But here she was, God knows where, hung over and pained. Her stomach hurt and she cringed as she felt a cramp spreading through her lower body. There was someone in bed along with her, and she could feel an elbow painfully digging into her back. Did she have sex at all last night? Did she go to this man's apartment and sleep with him? Luka wouldn't talk to her in ages is she was lucky. If she wasn't, she would lose him just like she lost everything in her life. She was a loser after all, and nothing would change that.

She opened her eyes and closed them immediately, pained by the light coming into the room from somewhere - probably through a window, her brain supplied helpfully. She wanted a drink. She wanted to cry. What would she do now that the demons were loose again? She needed to kick whoever it was in the bed out or leave his apartment, call Luka and pretend that everything was fine and that she was just a little bit sick – yes, a stomach flu, a 24-hour bug. She opened her eyes again and found herself staring at the ceiling of her apartment. At least one problem was solved - location. She turned her head to the left. A half-empty bottle of vodka stood on the nightstand. That explained the hangover. It was hard to turn her head right. The man was there, and she had no idea who he was. She slowly turned her head and her blurry vision focused on a man's back, with several reddened and almost parallel scratches across the shoulder blades. After a moment, she let out a breath she didn't know she was holding. She was with Luka, and it seemed she got a little carried away last night. She frowned. That still didn't add up. Luka and alcohol were two different parts of her life. Luka turned around in his sleep and groaned groggily, and Abby frowned again as she smelled alcohol on his breath.

Abby tried to recall more of the previous evening and vaguely remembered a bruising kiss when they felt a need to resort to physical action but were restrained due to their location. She remembered sitting on a squeaky barstool, with Luka by her side, thinking that any other day it would have been great, but not that Friday. That Friday had nothing good about it. She was nursing one beer after the other, holding on to the beer bottle as if it was full of liquid happiness, babbling about how she was scared and disgusted with the human race for being able to hurt their own so horribly. Luka listened to her, but was slightly preoccupied by holding on to his glass while muttering something to himself, and sometime later, he became frighteningly quiet while she couldn't stop laughing. After the bar they went to the liquor store, and she could swear that they bought the most fucking expensive bottle of booze there was in it. She had no recollection of getting home, but she knew she was the one to instigate the sex, and that Luka was the one who didn't really want to. She laughed hoarsely. _Nurse Rapes Doctor Boyfriend While Intoxicated._ It would be a great headline for the newest ER Gossip Report.

She wanted to fall asleep again, and wake up forgetting everything that happened, but life was unfortunately not that easy. Sometimes, she wondered why the human mind could retain everything bad in it for years, while forgetting the good moments right after they happened. Abby poked at the corners of her eyes with her fingers, trying to clear her head and wake up. Luka coughed into the pillow and pulled the covers closer to him. She looked at him, trying to forget about the fact that she got drunk. She needed to think about something other then her craving for a drink. To keep sane, she just thought about Luka. He seemed very peaceful when he slept, even now. He looked younger when he slept, a cliché that really seemed to be true for him, and the worry lines that seemed to be etched into his face during the day were almost invisible. He was awkwardly curled in her small bed, his feet sticking slightly over the other end. He looked so calm, so peaceful, so – normal, the little voice that seemed to narrate her hangovers added. Abby sighed and tried to think, not succeeding very well. She could never describe their relationship. Ever since the first kiss outside the ER, she knew that he was nothing like the previous men in her life. Abby remembered her excitement when they went out on a "date", and she discovered that Luka was different from what she imagined him to be. Like all single women in the ER, she was attracted to him physically; after all, she was a divorced woman in her late twenties, without a social life, and it seemed natural to try to go on a date with a very attractive, single doctor. Even during the first date, she was aware how different he was from his persona at work. He was funny, intelligent and he looked so good she had to prevent her brain from mentally undressing him while they talked.

That night, she felt very young again, and it was less like the usual boring wine-dine-fuck date and more like a sneaking out date with a hot guy from school. Everything seemed to be going great. They were walking outside, joking, becoming slightly more physical. Abby remembered the warmth of his hands as he held her hand between them, him asking if she was cold, and the soft, flirting notes in his voice made her feel special. No one ever wanted to talk to her. Most men only wanted the sex, and didn't even waste one moment to think about her as a human being, a woman. Luka did, and it flattered her. Just when she was ready to believe that this was a start of a great, uncomplicated relationship, the illusion ended. His hands disappeared from hers, and he was suddenly collapsing forward without a sound. She remembered, very vaguely, the man waving the pipe that had blood on it, Luka's blood. She remembered how suddenly the attacker disappeared from her view, remembered Luka smashing him against the gate, remembered the sound of the pipe dropping to the ground. With horror, she watched Luka continue slamming their incapacitated attacker again and again against the pavement, doing it with horrifying regularity. She saw the blood from the attacker's head on the cement and yelled for him to stop. Finally, he did, turning around to look at her, and she could barely stifle a scream. He looked like a wounded animal in a cage, eyes wild and uncomprehending, teeth bared, shaking with rage. After he released the already comatose man he sat down on the ground, and sat there, shaking, while she ran to call 911. When the paramedics came, he suddenly jumped up, and started to take vitals along with them and insisting that he was okay, but she could not shake off the memory of the madness and fear she saw in his eyes.

He left the ER after their attacker died, the back of his head still covered with blood. She was worried about him for several days, going over the worst scenarios in her head every moment that was not spent thinking about how beautiful he was. Finally, she decided that she needed to take the matter into her own hands. She took his address out of the personnel file and went to his hotel, dreading what she might see. When he opened the door, he looked so forlorn that she couldn't stop herself from being even more attracted to him. She barely remembered how their kissing started, but she knew that she couldn't stop it. Their kissing in silence continued for a long time, both of them savoring the intimacy neither of them had with another person for a long time. Some time much later, they finally stopped and looked at each other, knowing that at least for a short time they have found someone they wanted to be with. That night, she slept in Luka's bed, and both of them slept better then they did in a long time.

Their current relationship was more established. After several hurried encounters with prolonged "morning-after" effects, complicated by Maggie's breakdown and Luka going away to Croatia unexpectedly, they sat down and talked. Luka explained that it was somewhat difficult for him to deal with the relationship, because he wasn't sure what to do and he had problems adjusting to it, that he was slightly unused to the idea of a relationship outside marriage. She explained how it was difficult for her as well, that her divorce from Richard was very hard on her, and they called a truce. They have already been together for almost a year, and that said something, or so she hoped. But something was still between them, some invisible wedge not allowing them to fully understand each other. For a while, it went well, but then one day she got the call from Richard and had to go off to Oklahoma. The trip produced a tension in their relationship, but after Maggie seemingly straightened herself out, they reconciled. For the last month, everything finally seemed to go the way it should. But what would happen after this morning? Abby thought to herself, feeling cold all of a sudden. Would they be able to go on like nothing happened? Should they?

Abby put her hand on Luka's shoulder and shook him with all her strength. He mumbled something and just lay there, still asleep.

"Luka!" she said loudly and shook him again. He groaned and hoarsely muttered "Odjebi…" but still didn't open his eyes.

Already aware that it was probably the Croatian equivalent of "Fuck off!" from many early mornings when one or both of them had to work, Abby resorted to pinching his shoulder, one of the things that was usually guaranteed to wake him up. He groaned, swatted at her hand and continued to sleep. She took a good look at Luka's face and cringed. He looked just as bad as she felt - his face seemed to be gray, his lower lip was slightly swollen and there was a bruise on his chin. Abby sighed and pinched his shoulder as hard as she could. Luka opened his eyes and sat up suddenly, and Abby was willing to bet a lot of money that the thoughts going through his head almost exactly mirrored hers from a short time ago. Luka turned his head, saw her and paled slightly.

"We got drunk last night, didn't we?" he muttered, nervously tugging at the bed sheet.

"Yes," was all Abby could say. She felt ashamed, having broken a promise to herself that was the most important promise she ever made in her life. Her gaze shifted to the pack of the birth control pills on the nightstand, the small orange pill under "Fri." still taking up its spot. As she was quite sure that something happened between her and Luka last night, it was not a good sign.

"I didn't – didn't do anything you didn't-"

"No," Abby said, unable to look at him, and feeling quite repulsed with herself.

Luka got up from the bed, pulled on a T-shirt that was lying on the floor near the bed and without a word, walked out of the bedroom. Abby lay on the bed for several more moments, trying to collect her thoughts, but realized it was a futile undertaking, so she pulled on a bathrobe and finger-combed her tangled hair. She walked to the kitchen, noticing that Luka had started the coffeemaker and put some bread in the toaster. Abby opened the refrigerator and looked intently for something to diminish the hangover - unfortunately, the only thing she could think of was exactly what had caused it in the first place. Somewhere in Abby's pained mind, her medical skills whispered advice, but Abby felt too achy to listen to the voice of reason. The urge to throw up became too great and she made it to the bathroom just in time to lose whatever she ate the night before. The bout of nausea seemed to go on forever, and she cringed at the acidic taste in her mouth as she kneeled in front of the toilet, her knees hurting from the cold floor tiles.

After she brushed her teeth several times, Abby returned to the kitchen. She shuddered, feeling another wave of nausea rip through her, and padded over to the toaster, where the two slices of toast had long since popped up and turned hard and inedible. Thankfully, the coffee was still warm, so she poured herself a cup and drank it in two gulps, needing to stop her mouth from feeling like a distillery was located in it. After the caffeine kicked in, Abby was able to think more clearly. She realized that there was no sign of Luka anywhere, and that they really needed to talk. Muttering a few obscenities under her breath, Abby walked back into the bedroom to bury herself within the covers after having the talk with Luka. She had to be at work soon, but she didn't really care - right now she needed to die for a few hours, or at least get over feeling like she had been run over by several trucks. Calling in sick sounded like a great idea at this moment. Doing that, and perhaps convincing Luka to do the same. The ER would be short-staffed, but it was better off without them then with them this morning.

She made a detour to the bathroom to brush her teeth yet again and after doing that returned to the bedroom. There was a notable bulge underneath the covers, and for a moment, Abby thought that the mystery of Luka's disappearance had been solved. But alas, it was just a tangle of sheets, and feeling even more anxious, Abby went in search of Luka throughout the apartment. His coat was gone, as was his pager and cell phone. Feeling reasonably irritated, Abby picked up the phone in the kitchen and dialed Luka's cell phone number. After what seemed to be an hour, the call finally went through.

_"What?"_ Luka sounded as if he was about to shoot the phone.

"Where are you?" she asked tersely.

"I'm on my way to work," Luka grumbled. "I'm driving on Eisenhower-"

"I get it, Luka," Abby interrupted, rubbing her temples and wishing that her brain would just go numb and turn off. "I just thought you would have a reason for running out like that, that's all."

"I didn't run out," Luka muttered. "You were vomiting for twenty minutes. I told you that I was leaving when you were in the bathroom."

"Well, Luka, I was too busy puking up liver bile and alcohol to hear you," Abby snapped. She ran her fingers through her messy hair and gingerly sat down onto a kitchen chair, favoring her still spinning head. "You could have left a note. You know, you take a pen, take a piece of paper and write letters on it. Ever done it before?"

"There is no need to be sarcastic," Luka answered sharply. "I assumed that you'd leave right after me. You're on in ten minutes, you know."

"And how the hell am I supposed to get to work? Fly?" Abby inquired sourly. "You took the car!"

"I don't know - take the L, or take a cab, or- or I will just tell Weaver you're not feeling well and won't be in," Luka offered anxiously. "Look, I'm almost there. If I go back to get you we'll both be late - and we - we can have lunch tomorrow if we're up to it, okay? I got you some food from the bakery. It's on the table in the hall. Rest a little bit, relax."

His voice wavered on these words and nearly cracked, and Abby was sure that if she stayed on the phone for just one more moment she could talk him into calling in sick and coming back to the apartment, so they could talk. However, she suddenly felt spiteful and decided against it.

"Sure, fine, whatever, see you in the evening, bye," she muttered, slamming the phone receiver down. This day was definitely not one of the best in her life. In fact, it probably ranked as one of her worst. Not comparable to Maggie-in-Oklahoma kind of day, but definitely equal to Maggie-showing-up-in-the-ER day.

She looked down on her dresser, her eyes stopping on the massive silver frame that had been given to her by Eric on the day of her wedding. A long time ago it contained her wedding picture, but since Christmas of last year it had been occupied by a photo of Luka that she took one evening when they were watching movies. He looked so different on it; different from the Luka she saw every day and the total opposite of the man she woke up next to this morning. Luka was laughing when she took the photo. Abby closed her eyes and tried to remember what his laugh sounded like, but her memory refused to replay anything but the events of the night before and the morning after.


	2. Regrets and More Regrets

Chapter Two – "Regrets and More Regrets"

_"...Ja san budala...Seronjo! Debil! Glup sam k'o kurac! C'a san mislija juc'er?"_

To most of the motorists on the Eisenhower Expressway, this soliloquy would be indecipherable. It was perfectly clear to Luka, who was cursing himself in his native language, attempting to make himself to feel guiltier then he already felt and not really succeeding. Soon, he ran out of curses to apply to himself in Croatian, so he switched to English, but that did not seem to put his mind any more at ease.

"Fucking idiot, asshole, dickhead," he muttered to himself, interrupting his self-deprecation when he spied his turn-off and managed to turn into the right lane at the last second. He barely missed running into a large pick-up truck that suddenly decided to do just the same thing without using the turn signal, honked the horn of his Saab aggressively and speculated aloud about the relationship the other driver's mother might have had with various farm animals. Just three more minutes, and he would be parked in his parking spot in the hospital garage, away from the assholes who must have gotten driver's licenses on the Internet judging by their driving. Just as he was ready to speed up, the traffic stopped completely, and he was stuck a couple feet away from the freeway exit, alone in the car with his thoughts.

The little girl got to him. She shouldn't have gotten to him so much, but she did, and he had no idea why her death upset him so much. Sure, it had been a terrible and undeserved death, but there had to have been something else that made him want to drown his compassion in alcohol, and need to stop caring about the world. His memory after leaving the hospital with Abby was not very clear, but he remembered thinking that Abby was drinking, and she was not supposed to, and she was laughing, her laugh unusual and high-pitched, while he sat there and thought about what people looked like after they stepped on mines. He thought about things he had not thought of in a long time, memories that were part of the past, memories that were in medical files, war crimes investigations and on gravestones. Abby continued laughing, and he sat there, thinking of how he wanted to kill the people who did this to the little girl, wrap his hands around their necks and squeeze the life out of them, because scum like that did not deserve to be alive. But then Abby stopped laughing, and started kissing him, and as soon they were at her apartment, their inhibitions disappeared. He did not remember much of that part of the evening, but he hoped that he did not harm Abby in any way.

The traffic jam finally cleared, and Luka continued on his way to work, thinking that leaving Abby at home while he ran off to work was markedly not the smartest move he could have made, but he could not face what happened, not until some time later – the next morning, Tuesday, next month, any time other then the current. Of course, it would have probably been smarter to stay at home along with Abby, since he probably felt even worse than she did, but he only realized that when he was halfway to the hospital, strangely enough. Oh well, he could live through the next twelve hours somehow, he'd gone to work feeling more hung over in the past. Just as he thought this, his stomach apparently disagreed with the thought and lurched, attempting to escape his body by any means necessary. Luka grimaced and willed his stomach to quiet down until he was out of the car.

Luka spotted the parking garage sign, drove in, found his spot, parked the car and got out. His head was letting him know that he needed some aspirin, but he ignored the signals for a while and went to sign in. Lab coat on, stethoscope on, one or two charts tucked under an arm to make it look like he was actually a caring physician. Fake smile to the right, to the left, going inside the men's bathroom. Fake smile at random doctor coming out. Luka made sure no one was in the men's room before he allowed his stomach to finally win and threw up his meager breakfast and whatever dinner he might have had last night. Usually, he never got sick when he was hung over, but this morning it was like he had drank acid the night before.

When the nausea subsided, he left the stall and walked to the sink to rinse his mouth. When he was finished, he shuddered slightly as he caught a glimpse of his own greenish face in the mirror, and frowned when he noticed a bruise on his chin. Some vague memory about meeting something hard with his face the night before came to mind, but he was still not sure at what point in the evening that happened. Bruise or no bruise, it was time to go practice some medicine, and if the fate was good to him, he could hide out with easy cases all day and avoid traumas. Luka sighed, glanced at the sickly reflection again and exited the room, colliding with someone the moment he stepped out of the door, instantly happy that he had already thrown up. He looked at the person who ran into him and discovered that it was Carter, loaded with charts and looking somewhat anxious.

"Have you seen Abby?" Carter asked, looking as if he expected Luka to produce her out of thin air.

Luka quickly scanned his mind for the lie he came up with during the car ride over.

"She has stomach flu," he answered, trying to put some conviction into his lie. "I think she got it from me. Or maybe I got it from her..." He hoped that his hangover made him look sick enough for the lie to be good. He certainly felt sick enough.

"Well, take it easy and tell Abby I'm hoping that she'll get better soon," Carter said, then hesitated for a moment before adding "I heard about last night - that must have been rough." When Luka didn't answer, Carter smiled nervously. "Well, I have to be going – I need to meet the pulmonology consult on Mrs. Gerardo." With these words Carter hurried off to the elevator, leaving Luka standing at the entrance to the restroom wondering why Carter had felt the need to bring up Friday night. His wonderings didn't last long, because Kerry came out of the elevator Carter got on, looking ready to kill anyone not diligently earning their pay, and after informing her of Abby's "illness" he ducked into a curtain area to start on his first patient of the day, a middle-aged woman with shortness of breath.

After a steady line of patients with seasonal allergies and Friday-evening bar fight injuries, Luka finally found enough time to go to the cafeteria and get a bagel along with a cup of tea. Usually, strong coffee was his cure of choice for a hangover, but he felt that his stomach was not yet up to it. He returned to the ER and leaned against a wall near the admit desk, feeling okay for the first time that day – his stomach had almost settled down and the future confrontation with Abby seemed to be a long time away from the current moment.

"Dr. Kovac?"

Luka looked up from the cup of tea into which he had been staring and found himself staring at a nurse he vaguely knew. Lauren, or Lillian something.

"There is someone who wants to talk you in chairs – she says you treated her daughter. I told her you're on your break but she insisted..." The nurse trailed off as Luka put down his cup and walked towards chairs, strangely confident in the identity of the woman who was waiting for him. Just as he rounded the admit desk, a woman in a rumpled business suit jumped up from the chair she was huddled in and almost ran towards him, stopping abruptly before she approached him.

"Are you the doctor who took care of my Jane?" she asked, and he suddenly felt very cold.

Jane. Jane Johnson, the little girl of the evening before. Now he remembered more details. Jane was kidnapped when she was returning home from school in Detroit. Since Jane was epileptic, she wore a bracelet, and this helped them to identify her.

"I'm Marilyn, Jane's mother." The woman might have looked stunning any other day, but now her face was frozen in a grimace, and yesterday's make-up was smudged around her eyes and lips, making her look like an escapee from a Salvador Dali painting.

"I treated Jane yesterday when she was brought in." He did not want to remember the way she looked – the blonde hair in disarray, torn clothing covered in blood, eyes wide open but already glazed over. When he saw her on the gurney he instantly knew that she would not live. He was right, because the blood loss, skull fracture and hypothermia already did their work and she was dead moments later. They tried to get her heart beating again, but the trauma to Jane's body was too severe.

"I am very sorry, Mrs. Johnson. We did everything we could, but Jane's head injury was too severe–"

Marilyn took a couple of unsteady steps towards him, and then all of a sudden she was in his arms, crying silently, her body shaking with sobs. Luka put an arm around Marilyn's shoulder and held her carefully, feeling awkward and out of place. Some patients became aware of the commotion and were staring at Marilyn and him. He looked away, found himself looking at children's smiling faces on a poster and tried not to think about Jane's still body.

Several minutes later, Marilyn's sobs stopped and she almost jerked herself away from him. Luka lifted his arm from her shoulder and pulled a slightly crumpled Kleenex from the pocket of his lab coat. Marilyn managed a small smile as she accepted it and dabbed at her eyes, which looked like two giant bruises on her pale face.

"I- I am sorry. I shouldn't have-"

"I understand." They stood still for a moment, feeling tongue-tied and uncomfortable, their grief somehow out of place in the brightly lit hall.

"If you ever need to talk –"Luka took a pen and a business card out of his pocket and wrote down his private cell phone number, wondering why he was doing this, why he was giving his number to a complete stranger. Marylin accepted the card and managed a small smile.

"Thank you. I'm sorry that I- I caused a scene. Thank you for taking care of Janie..." Unable to say anything else, she turned around and walked away, swaying unsteadily on her high heels. Luka watched her disappear behind a corner, and wished, not for the first time that day, that he should have stayed at home. His cell phone rang, and he dug into of his pants pocket, finally locating it half a minute later and answering it with a lackluster "Hello."

"How are you doing, Luka?" Abby asked hesitantly.

He was surprised to get a call from Abby, and for a moment was not sure what to say.

"Well, I've been better. How are you?"

"Better then this morning. Listen, are you free now?"

"My lunch break is coming up."

"Can we meet at this little park by the lake? The one where we saw the fireworks."

"Okay. See you there in half an hour."

He let Randi know he was out to lunch and walked to the small park, where he and Abby once went to for a picnic. Abby was sitting on the bench, next to a plastic bag with some mysterious foil-wrapped objects.

"Here's a pastrami sandwich," she said in a way of greeting. He accepted it gratefully and ate it in silence, while Abby ate a sandwich with an unidentifiable filling. After they finished eating, they took a better look at each other, and did not really like what they saw.

"You look better," Luka said, wanting to talk to Abby about last night but not sure how to bring it up. 'Hey, let's talk about the sudden drinking binge and the wild sex afterwards' was hard to convert into nicer words.

"I look better than I feel, then," she muttered.

"Me too." He looked at Abby with genuine concern. He hadn't been very truthful, because she really did look like hell, and if she looked better than she felt... Still, he had to bring up last night, as much as it might be unpleasant for her.

"Do you remember anything about last night- other then the drinking?" he finally asked, hoping that she would say yes.

Oh yes, she did. "No," she lied. "Not a thing." After a whole day of contemplation, she was able to remember most of what went on last night, and that alone was enough to make her feel like dirt.

"Me neither," Luka said, and Abby knew he was lying as well. He must have been just as humiliated as she was. Luka smiled nervously, and almost hesitantly, put an arm around her shoulders. Abby closed her eyes and leaned against him, and they just sat on the bench silently for a while. Just as Abby had gathered up enough courage to try and tell the truth, Luka's pager went off, and she was ready to scream.

Luka glanced at the pager and sighed. "They had an big MVA on Eisenhower, so I've got to run. Sorry. We'll talk more this evening, if it is okay with you." He kissed her quickly, asked her to pick up some milk, said "See you later" and briskly walked back to the ER, still somewhat confused by this unexpected mid-day truce based on mutual denial. He got back just when the first ambulances were rolling in, and allowed himself to switch to the doctor mode, to leave behind an aching head and a guilty conscience, to do something he was good at. The only thing he seemed to be any good at, something spiteful in his mind added, and he hurried to smother this thought as he almost automatically intubated a young woman.

After several hours of running from one Trauma room to another, his shoes splattered with someone's blood, he was almost ready to go home, either to an unpleasant but much needed talk about the lost evening or to a forced make-up dinner. He just needed to go through some charts – the MVA created a lot of paperwork, so he needed to translate his undecipherable scrawls into something readable by the general population. He found an empty chair at the admit desk, piled the charts on a free stretch of counter, and began re-writing his notes more legibly. Just when he finished a chart and reached for what seemed to be the last one, he became aware of someone standing next to him.

"Are you the attending physician who treated Jane Johnson?" a female voice asked from above. Luka raised his head and found himself looking at a young woman who looked uncannily like a female version of Eminem. Was there anyone in the ER today that did not have to ask him about Jane Johnson? an annoyed voice in his mind asked.

"Yes," he said listlessly, wondering who the newcomers might be. "And you are?"

"Detective Hart, Detroit PD Homicide, and this," she pointed to a stocky man to her left, "is Detective Stivers, Chicago Homicide." The duo flashed their badges and looked at him expectantly. He wished that the ground would swallow him, and managed an almost desperate smile.

"We just need to ask you a couple of questions, Doctor Kov- Kova-"

"Kovac," he corrected unconsciously.

"Dr. Kovac," the woman repeated, noting his name down on a notepad. "When Jane was brought into the ER, was she conscious, did she regain consciousness later and did she attempt to say anything?"

"When she was brought in, she appeared to have a severe brain injury - she had a GCS of 4 and only had a minimal motor response and no eye response - and before intubation she also exhibited no verbal response," Luka answered, feeling very strange when he heard himself describing Jane's condition in impersonal medical terms. Detective Hart made some more notes and asked some more mundane questions - who was treating the girl, how they identified her, what procedures were used to treat her. He answered all of her questions, feeling more and more anxious with every moment. Now, he didn't care if that last chart was unreadable - he just needed to leave the ER before anyone else could ask him about Jane.

"One last question, Dr Kovac," Stivers said, looking slightly uncomfortable. "Who discovered that Jane was sexually assaulted?"

Luka almost snapped the pen he had been twirling when he heard the question.

"Nurse Lockhart," he said, trying to sound calm and failing.

"And where can we find her?" Hart asked.

"She's out sick today, but she will be back to work the day after tomorrow, I think. You can check with the desk clerk. Excuse me - I need to be going. My shift just ended." Luka stood up, put all of his charts into the somewhat precarious pile near Kerry's note that read "Please Sort Charts Alphabetically & Write Notes Legibly" and almost ran to the lounge. After depositing his lab coat into his locker and taking his jacket, he hurried off to the parking garage, where he got into his car and drove towards the expressway, which was still probably clogged with the remains of the MVA.

His prediction was right, and soon his car was hopelessly stuck in a traffic jam of evening commuters, and he felt like he was suffocating. A quick and nervous search through the glove compartment revealed an almost-full pack of cigarettes. He could barely hold his hand steady to light his cigarette, and he knew he probably should not be driving, and that he should not have gone to work that day, and that he should not have fought with Abby and that he should not have gotten drunk the night before, but everything probably shouldn't have been done in hindsight, and now it was too late to change the fact that he felt like the ghost of the dead girl was with him in the car and was accusing him of being a cold-hearted, self-pitying bastard. He pushed the thought away and held on to his cigarette with a shaking hand. Everything would be fine, he said to himself. They would have a long talk with Abby, and they would solve all of their problems, somehow. Everything would be just fine.

**Note:** The Croatian phrase above, or rather my pathetic attempt on Chakavian dialect with some curses thrown in, approximately means: "...I am a fool... Asshole! Moron! Stupid! What was I thinking yesterday?"

**to be continued sometime in the future...**


End file.
